‘What did he say?’ my mum wanted to know.
‘What?’ I replied, dragging my eyes away from the words. ‘Who?’
She was smiling across the table at me. No. She didn’t mean Mark. Calm down.
Sorry, Sadie. So very sorry. I love you.
How could he even say that? How could he say that he loved me when he’d just put me through that whole charade in the restaurant?
‘Alex, you great nelly.’ She laughed. ‘Remember him?’
I deleted Mark’s message and stuffed the mobile back in my bag. ‘He’s coming to meet us,’ I said, trying to cast my mind back to the phone conversation we’d had. Somehow it seemed hours ago. ‘He sounds absolutely knackered.’
She caught my eye and we both laughed. ‘Bless him,’ she said fondly. ‘You’ve got a good one there, Sadie. Wasn’t it lovely of him to sort all this out?’ She waved a hand across the coffee bar, obviously intending to take in the whole of Brighton, plus her, plus our hotel. ‘You’ve got a good one there,’ she repeated. ‘Of the three of you girls – I probably shouldn’t say this, but bugger it,’ she said, in a confidential manner. ‘Of the three of you girls, I feel happiest with the relationship you and Alex have got. Two equals, that’s what you are. You’re a good team.’
Sorry, Sadie. So very sorry. I love you.
‘Oh, thanks, Mum, that’s a lovely thing to say,’ I told her, finishing the rest of my coffee so I didn’t have to look her in the eye. If only she knew. Or rather, thank God she didn’t know. If she knew, it would probably be me on the receiving end of the handbag walloping. And that would be just for starters.
There was another text message that evening. Then another. Alex had taken me to dinner at Edward’s, which was, according to someone he worked with, the coolest place to be seen in Brighton. It was hidden away in a row of Georgian terraces the far side of Kemp Town and, unless you were in the know, you wouldn’t have looked twice at the outside.
Inside, the bar was cosy and intimate. It was the front room of the house, so perhaps had once been a drawing room or a dining room for the family that had lived here one hundred or more years before. Now, there were large painted canvases on the walls and a long, high, chocolate-brown sofa that ran around the entire left side of the room as you walked in, with small square tables and caramel-coloured suede cubes lined up in front.
The bar itself had an enormous mirror behind it, glass shelves, and subtle back-lighting. The whole effect was like something from Sex and the City. Of course, to sit there without ordering a Cosmopolitan would have been unthinkable.
I’d taken my phone along for Mum’s benefit, with the promise that if she had any problem getting the kids off to sleep, she just had to ring, and I would jump in a taxi and sort them out, pronto. Alex and I had just settled into a good people-watching spot in front of the bay window, when there was a familiar-sounding bleep.
‘Is that your mobile?’ Alex asked. He sniffed suspiciously at the lurid purple cocktail he’d randomly selected from the menu.
‘Yeah, hang on,’ I said.
I am so sorry, I read. I made a mistake.
‘Is it your mum? Should I go back?’ Alex wanted to know.
‘No,’ I said, deleting it quickly before he could lean over my shoulder and have a look. Go away, Mark. ‘It’s just a text from Becca to say happy birthday,’ I lied.
Hey, slick. I shoved the phone back in my bag. ‘What were we talking about? Weren’t you saying something about how great my new top looked?’
He smirked and looked straight at my tits. ‘It looks very, very great,’ he said.
‘Very, very great?’ I repeated. ‘Call yourself a sub-editor? What sort of a compliment is that?’
He sniggered. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right. I was so transfixed by the elegance and beauty of the stitching that—’
I elbowed him. ‘No, you weren’t. You were looking at my tits.’
He held up his hands. A fair cop, guv.‘All right, all right. But show me a straight man who wouldn’t. They look absolutely spectacular. In fact . . .’
His hand hovered dangerously close to my chest, and I squeaked and ducked back quickly. Overt boob-grabbing was probably not the thing to do in Edward’s. ‘Oi,’ I said. ‘Save that for later.’
‘Go on,’ he teased. ‘Just a quick squeeze. No one will notice.’
‘They bloody will,’ I told him primly, edging back even further. ‘Keep both hands on the table, please. And one foot on the floor at all times.’
‘Sorry,’ he said, taking a tentative swig of his cocktail. ‘Bloody hell. Think I’ll stick to lager next time. Now, going back to your breasts. It’s just that no-bra thing, that’s all. Somehow they look bigger than usual. And it’s the way that they . . . move when you walk. Or when you laugh. Actually, they move when you do anything, now that I come to think about it.’
‘What, and you seriously expect me to believe that you weren’t thinking about it before?’ I folded my hands across my chest and did my best to look stern. He was practically dribbling at the way the conversation was going.
He sighed melodramatically, one hand clapped to his forehead. ‘God, I tell you what, Sade,’ he said, ‘we’re going to have to stop talking about your boobs, or I’ll have to drag you down to the beach for a quick how’s-your-father before we’ve even ordered our starter.’
‘Let’s talk about Mrs Thatcher instead,’ I put in quickly. ‘That should cool your ardour.’
‘Is that your phone going again?’ he said.
‘God, it is as well,’ I grumbled. ‘Anyone would think it was my birthday or something.’ I felt a quick flip of panic as I pulled it out of my bag. Was Mark going to keep this up all night? I wouldn’t even be able to switch the wretched thing off, as I needed to keep the line open for Mum.
Sadie, I’m going mad. Pls tell me u forgive me.
‘Lizzie this time, saying happy birthday blah blah,’ I lied, feeling my cheeks flush with the mixture of deceit and alcohol.
Alex stood up, rather awkwardly, I couldn’t help noticing. ‘Just going to the gents,’ he said.
I was so relieved to have a minute to myself that I refrained from making any jokes about him going for an Armitage Shank.
‘OK,’ I said. I watched him go, then frantically started texting Mark back.
OK. C U Monday. Don’t txt again.
I glanced at the message. Shit, the ‘C U Monday’ looked horribly like ‘CUM on’ at first glance. I deleted the whole thing, started again.
OK. It’s cool. Don’t txt again.
I pressed Send just as Alex came back, and then slid the phone back into my bag.
‘Alex and Sadie? Your table’s ready,’ said a man who looked so art-house and trendy it was hard to believe he was actually a waiter.
Alex took my arm and in we went.
Brighton had been so fresh and lively and fun – birthday lunches aside – that I was gutted to pack up our things and go home on the Sunday. The meal had been delicious: carefully stacked towers of treats on enormous white plates, circled perfectly by hard-to-pronounce sauces. The four-poster had been sexy: my wrists were still chafed and red-ringed from some over-enthusiastic tying up. Hell, the kids had even been well behaved for my mum. The whole weekend had been a blast of sea air into our London-choked lungs.
Leaving was a wrench. The smell of the car was enough to make me feel physically sick before Alex had even started up the engine. There was something about returning to London that I always found vaguely depressing. Perhaps it was the volume of traffic, even on a Sunday, the long, slow haul through the Croydon stretch of the A23 and all the stressed-out Sunday IKEA shoppers queuing up for miles. Perhaps it was the way that litter blew across the road in front of us whenever we stopped at traffic lights, the way that people leaned in doorways clutching their cans of Special Brew with nowhere else to go. Perhaps it was the narrowing of the streets, the dirt on the pavements, the gangs of hard-faced kids scowling ou
t from under their hooded tops as we drove to our road after dropping off Mum. Suddenly Brighton, with its wide, far-reaching skies, the slow ssshhh of the grey waves onto the pebbled beach, and the bright lights on the pier, seemed very far away.
‘Back to reality,’ Alex commented, parking the car.
‘Mmmm,’ I said, glancing up at the front of our house and noticing just how grimy the windows were. ‘You can say that again.’
The phone started ringing almost as soon as we’d got in and I made a run for it, still holding Nathan. I was worried that it would be Mark again. After the last couple of days, nothing would have surprised me. In fact, it was rather a relief to see he wasn’t camped out on our front doorstep.
‘Hiya, Sadie – happy birthday for yesterday!’
‘Cat!’ I glanced at the photo of her on our mantelpiece in surprised delight. It was a picture that had been taken a couple of Christmases ago of me, Lizzie and Cat all wearing party hats and looking pink-cheeked and tipsy. ‘It’s so fab to hear your voice! I wasn’t expecting you to ring. Where are you?’
‘We’re here, we’re in Goa. Got in last night, Indian time. The hotel’s so sweet. I wasn’t going to ring for a few days, but I’ve got some news and I just couldn’t wait to tell you.’
‘What? What’s the news?’ I hoisted Nathan higher on my shoulder, pressing my face against him. I knew. I already knew from the way her words were bubbling excitedly down the phone line. My face was splitting into a smile before she’d even told me.
‘I’m pregnant! I can’t believe it, Sadie – it was a bit of an accident to be honest – I found out in the ladies’ toilets at bloody Heathrow airport, can you believe? Bought a test kit from Boots and . . . I was late, you see, you know me, never late. And anyway, I did that whole weeing on the white stick thing, and yeah, I’m pregnant! We’re going to have a baby!’
‘Oh, Cat.’ I could hardly speak, I felt so choked up with emotion. ‘I’m so pleased for you. So very brilliantly pleased! That is such amazing news! How are you feeling?’
‘Fine.’ The phone crackled and I missed her next words. ‘. . . massive, swollen boobs, I can hardly bear to have a shower because even the water splashing on them feels so sore.’
‘Yeah, I remember that one. Ouch.’
‘And Tom is so excited, and we’ve just told our parents – I mean, Mum and Dad and his parents and . . . God. I can’t believe I’m going to be a mum. Me! Aaargh!’ She laughed, thousands and thousands of miles away. ‘And I can’t even get plastered on the cheap booze out here now!’
‘What a nightmare,’ I joked. ‘Oh, that is so fab. I’m just made up for you, Cat. Wow. So you must be due . . .’
‘November, I think. I’m not sure. Too stunned to work it out. Oh – listen, better go. Running out of time.’
‘Take care of yourself then. Thanks so much for ringing. I’ll—’
The phone went dead then and I held it to my ear for just a few more seconds, in case there was a sudden reconnection before I put the receiver down. Wow. Cat and Tom having a baby. It was enough to get me clucky all over again, with Nathan barely six months old. I smelled his hair, rubbed his cheek against mine. ‘Lovely, lovely boy,’ I murmured, before striding out to the hall to find Alex. ‘Hey, guess what?’
It wasn’t until later that evening, when I was lying in a bath feeling increasingly irritated by the awful bitch-in the-boardroom rant of a book I was supposed to be reading for Lizzie’s book group, that several pennies started to drop.
Clatter, clatter, clatter.
I had been absent-mindedly thinking about Cat’s baby news when I remembered what she’d said about her boobs. What was it? Something about them being massive and swollen and sore.
Then I thought about Alex’s comment about how big my own boobs had looked in my new top.
Clatter.
I remembered the achey cramp I’d had last week, that I’d put down to period pain. Yet my period still hadn’t started.
Clatter.
I remembered how the smell of fish at the Crab and Crayfish restaurant had made me want to heave, and how sick I’d felt that morning. And then, with a horrible thudding feeling inside, I remembered all those times I’d had sex without contraception. Not just with Alex. With Mark, too.
Clunk.
CLUNK.
I threw the dreary book onto the bathroom floor and tried to weigh my breasts with my hands. Did they feel heavier? Were they bigger? Did they look at all swollen? Fuck. FUCK. How did they feel normally? I couldn’t even think, my brain was buzzing away so frenziedly, speeding off at different tangents every second.
I took a deep breath and tried the weighing thing again. It was hard to tell in the water so then I sat up, one boob in each hand, and tried to gauge their feel.
Of course, at that very moment, Alex walked into the bathroom. ‘Wa-hey,’ he said, his eyes bulging in lusting delight at the sight of me wet and naked with a hand under each breast.
‘Can’t you knock?’ I asked crossly, plunging under the water again.
‘Sorry,’ he said. He was still grinning. He held out the phone. ‘For you. If it’s not a bad time, obviously. Shall I give you a few minutes to finish yourself off ?’
Alarm at who was on the end of the line just about stopped me from slapping him and telling him to piss off. I grabbed the phone instead and made ‘Get lost’ motions with my other hand.
‘Hello?’
There was a sniff from the other end of the phone.
‘Lizzie, is that you?’ I asked. Oh, no. She’d given Boring Steve his marching orders. She was a single parent, having pushed him out of the house and straight into Jessica’s arms. She . . .
‘No, it’s me. Becca.’ She sounded so doleful I hardly recognized her voice.
‘Becca! Have you got a cold? I was going to ring you tonight,’ I said. There was a pause. ‘What’s up? Are you all right?’
She sighed heavily. ‘Me and Nick have split up,’ she said. ‘It’s all over. After one bloody month.’ She sniffed again. ‘Why are men such a nightmare? Why can’t I find one I want to be with for longer than a bloody month? It’s the same old thing every time. What am I doing wrong?’
Of course. I remembered now. The ‘Don’t ask’ Rome trip hadn’t sounded terribly promising. ‘Oh, darlin’,’ I said sympathetically. ‘What happened?’
She told me about the bickering and how tight-fisted he was and how he was always eyeing up other women and it drove her crazy and . . . well, about twenty minutes’ worth of other stuff, with a thesaurus-worthy list of damning adjectives about him.
‘So anyway, enough moaning,’ she said in the end, when my ear was hot with having the phone pressed against it. I heard her inhaling a deep yogic breath. ‘Time to forget all about Nobby Nick.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, as cheeringly as I knew how. ‘You can do better than that.’
‘Yeah. I can,’ she agreed. ‘You know, I am really desperate for a good girls’ night out on the town,’ she went on. ‘Desperate. When can we do it?’
The hand that wasn’t holding the phone to my ear slid across my belly. The belly that was still a bit on the saggy side from being pregnant with Nathan. The belly that . . .
‘Um . . . I’ll check with Alex,’ I said. ‘Can I ring you back tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, great,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring around a couple of others, try and get some more of the old crowd out. We can have a bit of a girly reunion, doll ourselves up to the nines, drink dodgy spirits all night and go and dance round our handbags somewhere.’
‘Look forward to it,’ I said loyally, my eyes fixed on my belly all the while. Oh God. ‘Talk to you tomorrow. And sorry to hear about Nick. Go round to the offy and get yourself some wine and chocolate at once.’
She sighed. ‘Yeah. The old stand-bys.’ She sounded sad again. ‘We’ll always have wine and chocolate. Anyway. Thanks for listening, Sadie. Bye.’
I pressed the button to switch the phone off and lay there
in the water, quite, quite still, trying to ignore the doubt that was creeping through my mind. Listen, I told myself firmly, your period is only a day or so late. Big deal. And besides, it’s bound to be a bit skewed at first, starting up after pregnancy and birth, isn’t it? Now that I thought about it, I was sure that things had been a bit irregular after Molly, too. Yeah. Actually, I was convinced my periods had been irregular for a while afterwards. Same as now. Why was I even expecting them to fall back into a routine, like clockwork?
I was imagining it all, just because of Cat’s news. A kind of sympathetic pregnancy, if you like. I was worse than a man!
Besides, it was far too soon to be . . .
No, it would just be unfair if I was . . .
I absolutely couldn’t even think about being . . .
I pulled the plug out of the bath, stood up and dried myself roughly. I would stop thinking about it. I would pull on my dressing gown, go downstairs and sterilize all of Nathan’s bottles for tomorrow, clean the kitchen, watch drossy Sunday night TV, flick through the Observer and forget that the thought had even crossed my mind.
What thought? Exactly.
For the whole of the next week, I tried to go through the motions without dwelling on the thought that was too terrible to be named. I saw Mark on Monday, which I had been alternately dreading and planning to bottle out of. On the evening itself, I decided that the no-show option was just too cowardly, and that instead, I should go round and tell him exactly how I felt. Which is what I did. Well, what I tried to do, anyway.
The thing was, before I could launch into my carefully rehearsed ‘I am so-o-o mad with you, what the hell were you playing at?’ speech, he got in first and apologized. Profusely. I then gave him a toned-down version of the ‘I am so-o-o mad with you etc’ speech, and he said he’d never pull a stunt like that again. Actually, he promised, hand on heart, the works. There’s nothing like a man with a sincere look in his come-to-bed eyes to make me waver.
That was the point at which I had planned to tell him, kindly but firmly, that things weren’t working out and we should probably stop seeing each other. Yet somehow or other, we had a kiss and a cuddle instead, just to make friends. And then, somehow or other, the kiss and cuddle swiftly turned into passionate, gasping sex on his office floor.
Any Way You Want Me Page 23
